Madoff’s Accountant Accepts His Guilt

According to The New York Times, Bernard L. Madoff’s longtime accountant David G. Friehling has pleaded guilty in federal court to 9 criminal charges. The potential prison term for Friehling could be 114 years. With that, the Madoff fraud seems to veer from being a security fraud to criminal tax case.

Friehling also admitted that he has never audited Madoff’s business but has produced rubber-stamp audits which permitted Madoff in obscuring his Ponzi scheme from the eyes of regulators. This went on for 20 long years. From 1991, Friehling was an independent auditor for Madoff’s business. Since he was an investor in the scheme, he could not have acted as a truly independent auditor. Friehling also stated that he was not aware of the Ponzi scheme. He just took Madoff’s figures and showed them as his own audit figures.